Big Three Court the Mainstream

Games are on the verge of becoming truly mainstream, but to do that game makers have to reach out more with games of wider appeal.

As videogames jump into another generation, publishers and developers are becoming more focussed on bringing in the mainstream. While Nintendo is riding its family-friendly mascots for all they're worth, it seems that Sony might be the one making the better progress.

Singstar appeals to more casual gamers and it's a success

Music is so universal that many creators have tapped into it for reaching out to a broader audience. Sony's latest attempt to bring in both casual gamers and non-gamers using music is the Singstar series, which has proven a hit, selling more than 2 million copies.

Singstar is a karaoke-type game for PlayStation 2 that uses USB microphones and the EyeToy camera. It was created by Sony's London-based development studio, the same team responsible for the multimillion-selling EyeToy series.

Next up for Sony's London studio is Buzz, a music-themed virtual game show where players wage musical knowledge warfare armed only with their crammed brains and buzzer controllers.

Games such as Full Spectrum Warrior may be good, but
they don't do it for the average man (or, importantly,
woman) on the street

Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have made it clear that broadening the appeal of games is critical as the industry moves forward. It's going to get significantly more expensive to make games for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Revolution, and publishers need to reach out to those that normally wouldn't consider playing games.

Nintendo has been touting expansion for a long time. Its most recent success is Nintendogs, a virtual puppy simulator for DS, which has already sold more than 400,000 copies in Japan. And the company is going to expand on the DS concept for Revolution.

Microsoft famously said at its recent E3 press conference that it hopes to touch a billion customers in the next generation. But the company has been less clear about how it hopes to do this. At the moment, Microsoft seems to be putting its faith into the next-generation Xbox Live services rather than creating games with broader appeal.

But while the three hardware manufacturers are at each other's throats, trying to outmanoeuvre the competition to reach the top of the hardware pile, analysts in the US are predicting that games are going to get much bigger over the next few years, regardless of which console comes out on top.

A recent study by David Cole, an analyst at DFC Intelligence, predicts that, no matter which console proves most popular, the global video game software trade will grow from last year's $18 billion (£10 billion), to more than $26 billion (£14.5 billion) by 2008.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games